Arranged Marriages

The world is too big to have only one culture, at least in our times, in which man is not able (yet?) to accept the difference. So we live in a planet full of many people, many places and dominant cultures very different from one another.
That's why problems like arranged marriages come up, and I say "problem" because in my society, in my culture, it really sounds like a problem.
In the West, marriage has undergone a lot of changes along History. There were times in which arranged marriages were used for many reasons. It could be like a mechanism for someone to ascend into a higher status in society, for example. Anyway, the course of things changed. Marriage started to be much more human than a political or religious mechanism. In other words, people are now married because they love the other person, instead of being married because of political reasons or other things. And this happens because people in the West have enough freedom to do that.
I strongly believe, to sum up, that this is the right way to do things. People should have the power to decide, because in fact it's their lives that are at stake.